Civic Platform wants to add a chapter to Poland’s constitution on the country’s relations with the EU before Warsaw is handed over the bloc’s presidency on 1 July this year.

Last week, President Bronislaw Komorowski met with Parliament’s Constitutional Committee on the changes, which would add the proviso that Polish administrative power would be handed over to the EU only after a parliamentary majority vote or a public referendum.

The new chapter would also clearly define the government’s role in protecting Polish interests in the EU, while the president may only co-operate.

The constitutional change is mainly geared towards Poland’s entry into the Eurozone, as well as the role of the National Bank of Poland after the country joins the currency.

“Poland’s central bank will become an element of the system of the central banks in the member states and of the European Bank, and the issuing of money will no longer belong to its tasks. Consequently, the Monetary Policy Council, the National Bank of Poland’s rate-setting body, will lose its constitutional function,” Krzysztof Laszkiewicz, Secretary of State at the Presidential Chancellery told the PAP news agency last November, when the idea was first mooted.

Further parliamentary debate took place about the proposed changes in December last year.

Meanwhile, head of the Constitutional Committee, Jaroslaw Gowin (Civic Platform) told the Rzeczpospolita daily that his party wants the changes to be implemented by the time Poland takes the reigns of the EU presidency.

The project has been slammed by Law and Justice, Poland Come First as well as Civic Platform’s junior coalition partner, the Polish Peasants’ Party, citing worries that talk on entry to the common currency is premature.

Speaking to today’s Rzeczpospolita, however, Krzysztof Laszkiewicz said that the paragraphs concerning euro entry may be left out so as to press on with the constitutional changes that are agreed upon by a parliamentary majority, in this instance 307 out of 460 votes. (jb)